Absolutely awful clay soil full of rubble... help!!

ebonylight

Hi all

I've just moved into a new ground floor flat in the south of London which amazingly has a very good sized garden (at least 20 metres square which in London is astounding)

I spent the entire day yesterday clearing as much weeds and rubbish as possible (it's a rented property and it's our responsibility to maintain - which means the landlord has literally done NOTHING since it was built in 2007) only to discover the ground underneath is terrible. Not only is it clay soil which made my heart sink but also it's absolutely full of rubble. Whilst I'm happy to lay membrane and pebbles over approximately half of it, I'm just wondering about possibly planing a lawn or at least having some flower/plant beds, and how best to do this without having to endure weeks of digging and sieving the soil?

Any ideas are welcome - I'm planning a bit of a landscaping scheme to combat the upkeep of the garden as, out of the three of us that live there I am the only one interested in "doing the garden" and I'm terrified of spiders - therefore don't want to have to "do" much that often!!

I am also reaching out to you lovely people to help me find some winter flowering plants, trees I can plant the seeds of now along the back fence (so long as they aren't conifers I hate those) and I'm also planning on using one corner for veggies. I'm thinking one or two of each plant at most - no point planting an entire crop as they will just wither and die before I have time to harvest them. I'm also thinking I'm a bit late in the year to do much veggie wise now. Any experts that can advise when - and what - best to plant?

So basically I need as much help as possible in turning my horrid city square of land into a blissful oasis to relax in and use productively!!

Thanks people.

amcluesent

TBH, I think you should be looking at growing in pots and then putting in some raised beds at least possible costs. Maybe try and source the edge boards and soil off freecycle?

Either that or pay for a labourer to dig over and take out the stones/rubble and !!!!!! in some spent mushroom compost or similar to improve the soil.

I'd forget about a lawn

Pretani

I can't advise you on the planting side of things, but if you're planning on laying paving or a any type of path over the clay, you'd be best off removing all the clay until you get down to hard soil or stone and filling it back up with stones. Too many times I've seen people take short-cuts by removing just enough clay to lay a solid base and end up regreating their decision a few years later when sinkage occurs.

If there's soil under the clay layer, usually it seperates from the clay if you remove it using a spade like you would do when cutting turf. Hopefully your clay layer isn't too deep or else you'd need quite a lot of filling. If its over 10 inches deep you'd just have dig down to 10 inch and whacker the filling 4 or 5 times with a whacker plate before you start laying paving, etc. (and hope it doesn't sink)